How Small Businesses Can Promote a Culture of Health

A culture rooted in health and wellness is one of the best gifts you can give your employees. It’s also critical for your company’s success, as a culture of health inspires productivity that results in profitability.

That said, building a workplace culture of health isn’t a task to take lightly. It requires an ongoing effort from everyone in your business as well as tangible resources your team can take advantage of to better their health and well-being.

Small businesses can promote a culture of health by implementing the following tips.   

Give Your Employees Something to Smile About

Contrary to popular belief, small things solidify your commitment to a culture of health in your business. For example, taking the time to give your employees something to smile about every day can do wonders for their health and your company.

Smiling is linked to various physical, psychological, and social benefits. For instance, it releases hormones like serotonin and dopamine, which inspires real feelings of happiness. Smiling has a miraculous effect on stress. And it invites social connection.

Small gestures that can make your employees smile include:

  • Rewards for good work 
  • Ordering lunch for the team  
  • Having a meaningful conversation  
  • Daily shout-outs and compliments  
  • Sending notes of encouragement  
  • Letting your team go early some days  
  • Greetings when they come to work and goodbyes when they leave

You could also provide your team with meaningful work to prompt smiles.

Feed Your Team Meaningful Work

When employees aren’t challenged and inspired by their work, that dissatisfaction and unhappiness can spread throughout your company quickly. On the other hand, when your workers engage in meaningful work, that positivity promotes a healthy company culture.

Allow your employees to do work they’re passionate about. Of course, mundane tasks will make a daily appearance. But each employee’s role should primarily consist of responsibilities they can take pride in.   

Offer Professional Development Opportunities

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It isn’t just about addressing your employees’ physical, mental, and emotional health. You should also focus on ensuring your workers are thriving economically if you want to promote a culture of health.

Offering professional development opportunities is a step in that direction. Anything you can do to help your employees continually grow and move forward in their careers, you should do it. Not having a lot of room in your budget for professional development opportunities shouldn’t stop you. Instead, think creatively about how you can help your employees grow.

For example, you could allow your employees to shadow a coworker of their choosing to advance their skill set. Or you could provide resources for self-education in areas your employees are interested in excelling at.  

Encourage Your Employees to Stay Active

Staying active is an integral part of being a holistically healthy person. Exercising regularly is wonderful for your physical body, but it also betters cognitive health, promotes eye health, keeps blood flowing through your body and to your brain, and reduces stress hormones.

You can’t follow your employees home to ensure they’re partaking in some physical activity every day. But you can encourage your employees to stay active through different activities and resources at work.

For example, you could host a health week a few times a year where you bring in medical professionals to conduct health screenings, counseling sessions, nutrition education, and so forth. Enter weight loss competitions as a team. Or offer resources like discounts on gym memberships, personal training, or sessions with a nutritionist.  

Offer a Comprehensive Health Benefits Package  

Many small businesses opt out of providing benefits to their employees. But you shouldn’t. One of the most definitive ways to promote a culture of health in your company is to offer benefits that address their holistic health.

A solid health insurance plan that includes care for mental health should be just the beginning of your benefits package. Add the following benefits when your budget permits:

  • Paid medical leave  
  • Vision and dental insurance  
  • Health savings accounts  
  • Life Insurance  
  • Retirement options  
  • Childcare resources  
  • Financial planning  
  • Flexible schedules  
  • Access to a life coach  
  • Paid vacation, sick time, and holidays   
  • Short and long-term disability coverage

Making personal connections with your workers is also critical for promoting a culture of health.  

Make Personal Connections With Your Workers

Creating and promoting a culture of health is impossible without open communication. That said, getting employees to open up to each other, let alone their bosses, is challenging to say the least.

But making an effort to create personal connections with your workers can help. When you have a personal relationship with each employee, you make space for them to be honest about what they’re going through at work and in their personal life.

Your employees will let you know exactly what they need to maintain their overall physical, mental, and emotional health in your conversations with them. All you have to do is listen and implement their suggestions.  

Normalize Time Off

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Unhealthy company cultures typically value profit over people. When it’s all about making money, it usually means long hours, huge workloads, and no time off for employees. Working around the clock is never conducive to a healthy work-life balance.

Normalizing time off is essential for a culture of health. Never give your employees a hard time when they need to take time off. Instead, encourage vacations and personal days. Also, if an employee needs to leave early or fit their schedules around personal obligations, let them.  

Lead By Example

If you truly want to promote a culture of health, it has to start from the top down. In other words, you must lead by example. Doing so will help your employees feel comfortable following in your footsteps because you practice what you preach.

So, take vacations and time off yourself. Talk openly about mental health and your personal journey with it. Participate in all health-related activities and events you put on. Dig deep into what a healthy work-life balance is for you and your employees.

When you live a healthy lifestyle and are open about prioritizing holistic health and well-being, your team will be more likely to follow your lead.  

Conclusion on Cultivating Good Health in Your Business

The key to creating a strong team is establishing a company culture rooted in health, positivity, and productivity. Commit to implementing some of what you learned above to promote a culture of health in your small business.  

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7 Ways To Keep a Sharp Brain For Business

Running your own business would always be one of the best ways to earn money. While the process of earning enough income can be challenging, reaching this point would make all the hard work worth it. But, there’s more to running a business than just generating sales and gaining profits. Having a sharp brain for business is very important.

Being the owner of a business, whether it’s a keto meal delivery, spa, retail, furniture, or any other type of business, you must keep your brain sharp at all times. This will help ensure that you’re making the right decisions and adopting the best strategies to ensure success. To help you out, here are some ways to keep a sharp brain for business:

  • Visit A Chiropractor 

A chiropractor is a professional who can help to treat certain conditions related to your spine, bones, joints, and muscle. Apart from relieving your body of any form of tension, a chiropractor can also help keep your brain sharp and stimulated, which is perfect if you’re running your own business.  

Visiting the best chiropractor in Brampton or one within your vicinity allows your body to heal and restore its ability to connect its nervous system to your body and brain. This should help to keep your brain stimulated and improve its performance, allowing you to think sharply when it comes to business-related activities.

  • Get Enough Sleep  

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Medical professionals can’t stress enough the need to get adequate sleep to achieve optimal health. Yes, running a business can consume plenty of your time, and it might be tempting to sacrifice your sleep for it, as you might think that it can help make your business grow and become profitable. However, this practice might jeopardize your wellbeing.

Ideally, you should sleep at least seven to nine hours a day. This should help your brain to rest and give it enough energy for the entire day. If you prevent your brain from getting enough sleep, you might stress it out or encourage it to easily forget as you’re not giving it enough energy for it to absorb all the information you ought to take note of.

  • Eat The Right Food 

Food plays an important role in keeping your entire body healthy. Apart from ensuring that you get the right nutrients, certain foods also help keep your brain healthy, allowing you to keep it sharp and helping you think clearly as you run your business. With the right brain-friendly food, you can bring all the right vitamins and minerals into your brain, allowing it to achieve its maximum potential.  

Food items that are great for your brain include green and leafy vegetables, fatty fish, dark chocolate, nuts, eggs, and green tea. You can incorporate such into your regular meals or convert them into snacks if you can’t sneak them into main dishes. Any of these options will surely be a delicious and fun way to keep your brain healthy and sharp. Any of these options will surely be a delicious and fun way to keep your brain healthy and sharp. For busy individuals running a business, a weekly meal prep delivery may be the ideal solution. This service will allow you to maintain a balanced diet with nutritious, brain-boosting food without the stress of planning and cooking meals on your own. It’s a helpful tool to ensure that your business runs smoothly as you run on a healthy and well-nourished mind and body.

  • Exercise Regularly 

Keeping your body moving can also help with your brain health. Exercising regularly helps keep the tissues in your brain young and healthy, allowing you to think sharply and quickly. Moreover, it also helps stimulate blood flow and bring more air to your lungs.

Luckily, doing exercises on a regular basis can be quick and easy as you don’t need to hit the gym to make it happen. You can do basic cardio exercises at home for at least 20 minutes daily, and you’re already good to go. If you could do it in the morning, the better, as this is one effective way of fueling up your body throughout the day.

  • Do Mental Exercises 

Of course, one of the best ways you can keep your brain sharp is by doing brain exercises. While running a business might already encourage this as you’re always making these big, crucial decisions, adding more mentally engaging practices would surely help you think sharply and keep your brain in its best shape and condition.  

There are plenty of mental exercises you could try. You can begin by downloading apps that encourage brain training, solving puzzles, or doing Sudoku. You can do these activities during your downtime or minutes before hitting the hay to help you sleep better (talk about hitting two birds with one stone).

  • Take A Well-Deserved Rest 

sharp-brain

As you run your business, you might tend to overstimulate your brain as you navigate a busy day and do plenty of mentally challenging activities, which might force your body to feel tired and stressed, eventually leading to burnout. While mental exercises are good for your body, it needs to rest once in a while, too. Besides sleep, taking short breaks every now and then is also a must.

If you have enough time on your hands, you should take your well-deserved rest during the weekend, when you don’t need to worry too much about your business. You can take a trip to the spa, get a relaxing massage, or go on a short vacation by the beach and just let yourself enjoy the good things. Doing so will help relax and rejuvenate your mind and body, recharging for whatever’s to come the following week.

  • Always Try To Learn Something New 

You should never stop learning. With the number of skills and ideas you can learn, take each of them as an opportunity to keep your brain sharp and stimulated, while also allowing yourself to hone your existing capabilities, or nurture and be master at a new one.

There are plenty of things you could try to learn every day. It could be basic cooking, baking, painting, hiking, woodworking, or photography, among others. This could be something fun that helps keep yourself challenged and stimulated at the same time.

Takeaway  

Keeping a sharp brain for business can be challenging, especially since most of your time is already allotted to your business as you think of ways to keep it successful. While running one might seem enough to keep your brain going, the tasks you take on might not be sufficient to keep it sharp. Nevertheless, you can always try to do some brain exercises, get enough sleep, eat the right food, do home workouts, and more. These activities should help stimulate your brain, keeping it in tiptop condition at all times, which can benefit your business in the long run.

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